Re: @ flash[:notice] ??

Flash is special hash that's sort of like a session-lite. You can put whatever you like in it and it will be available to the very next action called. It differs from the session in that the lifecycle of an object stored in the flash is the next action. After that it's gone.

There is nothing special about flash[:notice]. :notice is just a key value used by convention to pass around errors and alert messages.